R063Cabbage Thoran
The master thoran: shredded cabbage, crushed coconut, turmeric
Recipes › Vegetables: The Half of the Plate
R067
Beetroot Thoran
Grated beetroot, coconut, and the sweetest of the thorans
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
The re-engineeringOil at 10 g rather than 25 g, and no sugar. Beetroot thoran is often sweetened; at 6.8 g of natural sugar per 100 g the vegetable has already done that work, and added jaggery pushes a mild side dish towards a dessert.
Beetroot is not an old Kerala vegetable, and a beetroot thoran carries none of the sadya's authority. It is a twentieth-century household dish, and it is included here for two practical reasons: children eat it, and it is the one thoran that is genuinely good cold the next day. It is also the sweetest thing in this chapter, which matters — it has roughly one and a half times the available carbohydrate of cabbage, so it is a vegetable to enjoy rather than one to eat in unlimited volume.
Before you start: Beetroot stains. Grate it onto a plate rather than a wooden board, and rub your hands with a cut lime afterwards.
Beetroot Thoran
Active 20 minutes Total 30 minutes
Scale
4 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓450 g (about 3 medium) beetroot, peeled and coarsely grated
- ✓50 g (⅔ cup) freshly grated coconut
- ✓40 g (about 4) shallots, roughly chopped
- ✓8 g (1–2) green chillies, roughly chopped
- ✓1.5 g (¼ tsp) ground turmeric
- ✓2 g (½ tsp) salt, or M07
- ✓10 g (2 tsp) coconut oil
- ✓2 g (½ tsp) mustard seed
- ✓2 g (1 sprig) curry leaves
Allergens: Mustard.
Equipment: Wide pan, 26 cm, with a lid; coarse grater or the grating disc of a food processor. Substitute: dice by hand at 5 mm, which takes longer and gives a firmer, less cohesive dish that some households prefer.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 125 kcal |
| Protein | 2.8 g |
| Fibre | 5.0 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 10.2 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 15.2 g |
| Sugars | 9.4 g |
| Fat | 8.1 g |
| Saturated fat | 6.7 g |
| Sodium | 290 mg |
From ICMR-NIN IFCT 2017 and USDA FoodData Central. Per-serving figures stay the same when you scale.
Method — tap a step to mark it done, tap a time to start a timer
- Crush the coconut, shallots, chilli and turmeric to a coarse crumble.
- Heat the dry pan , add the oil, pop the mustard 20–30 seconds, then the curry leaves 5–10 seconds.
- Add the grated beetroot and salt, and toss for until it darkens and glistens.
- Cover and cook on a low to medium flame, stirring every , until the beetroot is tender to the bite with no chalkiness at the centre of a shred, . It gives up little water, so add 3 tablespoons and re-cover if the pan sounds dry before it is done. Beetroot is the one thoran in this chapter that genuinely needs a little water.
- Uncover and cook off any remaining liquid, .
- Fold in the crush and cook on a low flame. The colour will go from crimson to a deeper purple-red as the coconut takes up the juice, which is correct.
Why this worksBeetroot's sweetness is sucrose in a dense root, and dense roots need conducted heat and time rather than steam. Grating solves this by shortening the distance heat has to travel, which is why a grated beetroot thoran takes twelve minutes and a diced one takes twenty-five. The coconut absorbs the pigment and the sugar, which is why this dish tastes better after an hour.
Sourcing note
Beetroot is one Kerala vegetable a Western supermarket stocks better than a Kerala market does. Buy raw beetroot, not the cooked vacuum-packed kind and never the kind in vinegar, which is unusable here. Pre-grated raw beetroot in a bag is fine and saves ten minutes. Golden beetroot works and looks entirely wrong, which is not a reason to avoid it.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 10.2 g net carbohydrate and 9.4 g of it sugars — the highest in this chapter's vegetable dishes, and worth knowing. This is not a reason to avoid beetroot; it is a reason to serve 100 g of it rather than 200 g, and to put a cabbage or okra dish next to it rather than another sweet root.
Blood pressure: 290 mg sodium, of which about 90 mg is the beetroot's own. With M07 it falls to about 215 mg.
Cholesterol: 6.7 g saturated fat per serving from the coconut and oil.
Swap it
Beetroot → 450 g grated carrot. Slightly lower in sugar, much lighter in colour, cooks 4 minutes faster.
Beetroot → half beetroot, half cabbage. Sugars fall to about 6 g per serving and the dish keeps most of its colour. The best version if you are watching carbohydrate closely.
Add 30 g roasted peanuts, crushed, at the end → texture, 1.5 g protein and about 20 kcal per serving. A Tamil-inflected addition rather than a Kerala one, and good. (Allergen: this swap introduces peanuts.)
Make ahead · store · freeze
The best make-ahead thoran in the chapter, and better on day two. Fridge 4 days. Freeze 2 months, and it thaws better than any other thoran here because beetroot's cell structure holds up. Reheat dry 3–4 minutes, or eat it cold.
Leftovers
Cold beetroot thoran with curd and a pinch of M06 is essentially a pachadi. It also goes into a wrap or a sandwich better than any other dish in this book.
Troubleshooting
Still chalky after 15 minutes: old beetroot, or grated too coarse. Add 4 tablespoons water, cover, 5 more minutes.
Tastes flat and earthy: beetroot needs more acid than other thorans. A teaspoon of lime juice off the heat fixes it, and geosmin, the earthy compound, is the reason.
Everything is pink: expected. The chopping board will recover; the wooden spoon may not.
Serve with
R015 Matta Rice · R059 Sambar · R074 Vendakka Mezhukkupuratti · R081 Moru Curry
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